The electoral district is named after Mary Colton, who arrived in Adelaide in 1839 and worked for the welfare of women and children. She was the President of the Women's Suffrage League, and lived to see the introduction of equal voting rights for women in 1894.

Colton could be considered a bellwether seat as it is the only current lower house seat in parliament to have been consistently won by the party that forms government. Only Colton and Adelaide changed from Liberal to Labor at the 2002 election when Labor won government from the Liberals, with Adelaide won by the Liberals in 2010. On 2014 election results and a uniform swing, Colton would have been the Liberal's 24th seat to form majority government. The abolished seat of Henley Beach which Colton replaced was also won by the government of the day.